Counterpoint:
David Miller’s Midnight2 from Midnight in
the Garden of the Sea.

They’ll
Take You There

By
Nadine Wasserman

Out
of This World: Transcending the Terrestrial in Contemporary
Art

Albany
International Airport Gallery, through Nov. 29

People are having a love affair with several pieces on display
at the Albany International Airport Gallery. They have been
caught petting, stroking, grabbing, and fondling any piece
they can get their hands on. Despite the “do not touch” signs
and the vigilant eyes of the gallery staff, it’s hard to blame
them. The show is attractive, colorful, and fun. Even the
walls of the gallery are painted a playful and eye-catching
electric green.

If you approach the show from the stairs you first encounter
a fabric outcropping by Susie Brandt that occupies a corner
space at the landing. This piece, called Mine, is made
of layered pieces of fabric that stick out from the wall.
Wide at the base and tapering at the top, the piece resembles
a geological formation. It sets up the tenor of the rest of
the exhibition.

Thematically, the exhibition presents work that uses common
materials as the basis for exploring both natural and otherworldly
forms. Not only are pieces made from fabric swatches, but
they are made with pipe cleaners, pom-poms, hot glue, spools
of thread, pencils, and plastic goods. Each of these everyday
ingredients are combined to create something both familiar
and fanciful.

At the top of the stairs is Chris Harvey’s video The Mandala
of Perfect Happiness. In it the artist painstakingly builds
a Mandala out of colorful plastic items that are plentiful
and readily available. He builds them up into towers and then
spreads them out across the floor, filling every nook and
cranny. As an excessive number of plastic paraphernalia accumulates
into a sculpture, Harvey’s process becomes more meditative.
The artist floats, the objects spin and vibrate, and the colors
flicker and become psychedelic. Harvey’s labor-intensive process
is echoed throughout the space, not only in his own monolithic
sculptures but in the work of other artists.

Betsy Brandt uses hot glue, beads, pom-poms, ink and watercolor
to create accumulative and repetitive two-dimensional and
three-dimensional works. She is interested in organic growth.
Her delicate shapes resemble stars or flowers but nothing
that would be immediately recognizable. Akin is a wall
vitrine containing colorful, spiky blobs that could be interstellar
jellyfish. The shapes and patterns of her organic assemblages
are echoed in the flowery, lacy, and shell-like sculptures
of Ginger Ertz. Made from pipe cleaners, these colossal mollusks
are both weighty and fluffy. They evoke something at once
frail and sinister. Jennifer Maestre’s strangely evocative
sculptures are similarly paradoxical. Cute but menacing they
resemble mammals, amphibians, and flowers possibly from another
planet. Made from the ends of sharpened pencils strung together,
they are spiky rather than cuddly. Imp looks like a
character right out of Star Wars.

The intergalactic theme is repeated in Devorah Sperber’s pieces
which are based on Star Trek. Sperber often uses spools
of thread to recreate the pixels of old master paintings or
iconic images. Spock 3 is a portrait from an episode
called Mirror, Mirror in which the characters encounter
their evil counterparts. Inspired by the mission of the Enterprise
to “explore strange new worlds,” Sperber uses images from
the TV show to pursue her own interest in perception and subjective
reality.

Most of the artists included in the exhibition use everyday
items or materials more suited to crafts, but David Miller
uses the more traditional medium of paint. While the colorful
and organic shapes that populate his paintings do complement
the other work in the exhibition, the inclusion of his work
is a bit awkward thematically. Nevertheless, his seven-painting
series entitled Mystery of the Sea is an interesting
counterpart to Harvey’s Seven Pillars of Commerce and Pleasure.
From the floor below, Harvey’s multi-colored columns beckon
from beyond the glass. They are perfectly placed to entice
viewers to venture upstairs and boldly go where the artists
wish to take them.